To minimise the post lockdown effect the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has asked state and port authorities to classify land sites suitable for renewable energy manufacturing and export services hubs.
Anand Kumar, secretary, MNRE, in a twitter post said “All states and ports are requested to identify land parcels of 50-500 acres for setting up renewable energy manufacturing and export services hub.”
Kumar earlier in one of his tweets said that the ministry would provide full support to companies planning to expand or set-up bases in India for manufacturing and export of services in the renewable energy sector.
Solar industry is already facing heat of the global recession and pandemic , the industry has already noted that lockdown will impact their business operations. Hence, this step comes as a relief as far as local manufacturing of renewables is concerned.
MNRE has also extended the deadline for the approved list of models and manufacturers by six months to provide some relief to renewable energy firms that are under stress due to the COVID-19 crisis. The earlier deadline was March 31.
In February this year home grown solar equipment manufacturer and EPC player -Vikram Solar shut down its one of the manufacturing units citing economic slowdown, this resulted in laying off 320 employees. However this was the condition before the pandemic, lockdown and IMF’s prediction of global recession. It will be interesting to see how things fall into place after the world comes out of the pandemic and lockdown situation.
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